consummation
by CeliaBlair24
Summary: Sif wonders if she could ever have the chance to take it all back. She wonders if it would even matter.


The air is rife with something like finality, the quiet whisper of a chapter closed.

This day, though memory would have Sif be pleased, she is not (and how shocking it is, that she finds, much as she tries, she could never be. Not for _this_).

Chatter dies down then; the court so uncharacteristically silent, as if the taunts and jeers of yesterday were a slight of memory, the fevered dreams of battle-front warriors, back from the very heart of Utgard (_how peculiar_, she thinks, curiouser and curiouser. How peculiar that this day of _all_ days, Asgard turns on its heels).

Odin All-father is the first to break the silence. He does so brusquely, as if he had somewhere else to be. Maybe he did. Sif, for all her association with the Royal family, had no idea of the inner workings of the monarchy.

"Guilty."

It is a simple word, yet it does for the court as Mjolnir would, inciting chaos with one fell swoop. Or… perhaps, the analogy is not quite there. Brown eyes shift from the head of the atrium, where the All-father rests so calmly in his seat, to just beyond him, the last step of the dais. Chained like some rabid animal, wiry limbs shackled behind him— dwarven work, because even if pride was as flesh to Asgard as the people themselves, the All-father was not nearly stupid enough to settle for less, not for _him_. He looked thinner now, as a child in his prisoners' rags. From so high up, she could map the bruises mottling what little she could see of his arms. See the way they bent so tightly behind him, pulling him taut, like the pull of a drawstring, and how, even as the court descended into chaos, he remained so remarkably still.

As if this were alright, as if he couldn't be bothered like _always_.

_Shadow prince…._

Sif wonders why it is now of all times that this title bothers her.

Thor is not here, has not been for the last several years. Neither is Frigga for that matter, though Sif doubts that was of any choice of her own. She realizes this slowly, only fully comprehending its implications when her eyes have made a full round of the amphitheater and failed to pick even one friendly face among the dozens in Odin's court.

She wonders deeply, in the treasonous part of her brain that allows her to wonder, why if so much of this were to be publicized, so little of it seemed fair. She knew—of course _she knew_— of Jotunheim and of Asgard and of Midgard. She knew Loki's folly, could tally the numbers of every person, every creature he'd killed in his ill-sought venture for conquest. Knew, much as she'd always known, where it was Loki had gone wrong, _why_ it was Loki had been wrong.

But this, though she cannot think as to why, does nothing for her reasoning. Nothing for the calculations already running amok in her mind, screaming to her of this unfairness. She wonders, shortly, _angrily_, however ill-conceived, why it was Thor was on Midgard and not here, why it was Frigga had barricaded herself in the West wing of the palace, had refused to come out on any circumstance.

Did not Loki's fate concern them? If not for love, if not for sentiment, then surely for simple intrigue, whatever cruel vindication they could harbor against him. Should not _that_, in the least, lure them to the courts to watch and marvel at Loki's descent? (Like she had. She convinces herself that this is the only reason, winces not as the butt end of a spear has Loki sprawling, the cruelty explained for by his seeming lack of respect. That he would not kneel for his king, when surely he could not, chained as he is. This she does not say, not to courtiers, brother and father beside her— wordlessly accepting; _so wordlessly accepting_— and not to herself, struggle as she might to come to terms with this new reality).

All-father raises a hand. Firm, a man of power. The court is silenced once again.

Sif watches with a muted sort of horror as Loki is drawn back, blood splattered along the earthen tiles beneath him, dripping from whatever head wound the Einherjar had given him.

He's quiet still, so seemingly obedient.

He does not fight his handler, nor the way he is being treated.

It is a first, and yet, for all that she tries, Sif cannot pull forth any memory of him ever having acted otherwise. Not in this court, certainly not to _Odin_.

She wonders if anyone else has noticed this. Wonders if, perhaps, she was wrong in her worry, if the court were as finely underhanded as Loki had always said it had been. If Loki were fighting in some other way, any other way to explain away the hostility, the utter _absurdity_ of this happening.

"Your punishment will be given privately,"

The lawspeaker presides, _haughty_, Sif thinks, though she had no real measure of tone when it came to court. She knew little, after all. Of only Thor, her father who was a frequent participator, as per his station as a nobleman. _Loki_.

It was a small justice, otherwise.

Sif found herself grateful for this, herded as she was from the thick of the crowd to the doorway leading out. Her father is speaking lowly, words of advice, she thinks, but does not hear. Her eyes are on Loki, his head bowed, so low as to touch the tiles should he but tilt his head. Blood drips from his nose onto earthen tiles, deep red, the same as hers, as any other person in this court, in this palace, in _all Asgard_.

For a moment she forgets, her place and his, the reasoning behind his punishment, though she'd been there for the thick of it, seen it, believed it from the moment he'd started his scheming.

His silence rings loudest in the midst of the noiseless crowd, like the blow of a horn preceding floating pyres and the disintegration of the dead from the falls of Marmora and into the nether.

She wonders shortly if this was of any significance, if her thoughts were as sound as she'd always believed them to be, if she really would never see him again.

The sadness comes as a dawning realization once the doors have been shut and the judgement commenced undisturbed.

Sif remembers Odin All-fathers face, stony for all that he seemed so utterly unaffected. She wonders if he cared as little as she cared, herded away from the palace like flocking cattle, her fathers' arm wound over her shoulders, her brother lost in the thick of the crowds, perhaps headed back on duty as part of the palace guard for whatever it is they would need to do, when Asgard has been all but pushed to its hilt.

"Let us go home,"

Father says, voice gravelly with age and disuse.

Sif says nothing to this, as she has nothing to say.

Her words have left her, as her heart has, trapped in the atrium with Loki.

Sif wonders if she could ever have the chance to take it all back.

She wonders if it would even matter.

In the end, the trumpets sound from the heart of the amphitheater, the thick of seidr like a wraith over all Asgard. There is mourning, the despair of a mother and none else.

Yet Sif sits still on the edge of the once-broken rainbow bridge, looks down into the raging waters of Marmora and wonders of Thor and his workings. Guiding mind from her gilded youth, the light of too-bright green eyes as they played among the flowers in the Queens garden. Heedless of tears, the ache of her heart. She wonders of Midgard, the novelty of being there. Wonders of other worlds, of battles fought and adventures had.

In the end, it works for a little while.

She is grateful for this, at least.

In the end, she is grateful.


End file.
